


Hospice

by murg



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ableism, Absurdism, Animal Abuse, Dark Comedy, Empathy, Gen, Mentions of Cancer, Terminal Illnesses, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator, let's all get mad and scream at each other, suspicious inconsistencies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 15:37:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6861028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murg/pseuds/murg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there’s one thing Fanny said that’s 100% true, no denying it, it’s that we’re in the trenches. This is attrition. At this point, it really isn’t the disease that’ll kill us. It’s everything else. It’s the whole world on our backs, its rancid, wet breath hot against our necks. Chemo isn’t saving Fanny’s life and surgery isn’t gonna save mine.</p><p>I don’t think anger will, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hospice

 

Hospice

            Daisy Thompson comes by my house at four in the morning, dragging her new pitbull puppy on a rope behind her. She rattles the screen door until I get out of bed.

            “Her name is Princess,” she informs me as I blink the crust out of my eyes and lick at the mucusy roof of my mouth, “and I need you to babysit her while I go to work.”

            “Uh,” I say.

            “Yeah, that’s right,” Daisy says, lifting her chin up. “I got a new job. I’m what you call an RN, Peter. RN, Registered Nurse.” She draws out the syllables long, grinding against her jaw, arr-enn.

            “Huh,” I say.

            Princess snaps her jaws and whines. She’s drooling on the porch. I scratch at my thigh, the skin bruised and swollen from a misplaced needle. It’s four in the morning.

            “That’s right,” Daisy says. “Yeah. So I need someone to look after Princess.”

            “Hm,” I say.

            “Oh, and she needs to be let out a lot,” she says, “or she pees herself. I gotta train her and all that. I’ll do that when I get home.”

            “Mm,” I say.

            She hands me the rope, rough in my fumbling fingers. She looks me up and down, her lips curling in disapproval. “Put some clothes on, Pete,” she says. “Christ, don’t come to the door in your undies like that. You’ll scare the whole neighborhood stiff.”

            I think of an inappropriate joke. My lips grin without my consent. Daisy rolls her eyes, huffing. I let myself grin. Princess tugs the rope and I tug back.

            “I’ll be back at six,” she says. “Anyways. I’ll be back then. Thanks, Pete, I’ll pay you when I got all my money. I’ll pay you twenty dollars. I gotta go.”

            “Bye,” I say, reeling Princess in toward my side.

            Daisy shakes her head. “Bye,” she says. “I gotta go get some coffee and psych myself up. Gotta get myself ready.”

            Psych herself up. Get herself ready. Daisy was gonna be a Broadway actress, after she dropped out of high school, took a Greyhound to New York and came back two weeks later, ten pounds thinner. She still approaches everything like she’s hot shit. We’ll see how she plays the part of cleaning bedpans.

            I watch Daisy march off the steps, toward the fence separating our yards. She gets the end of her dress stuck as she clamors over the top, flipping up to reveal her blood-stained Minnie Mouse panties. She untangles it and glances behind her to make sure I didn’t see.

            Daisy Thompson really is just too stupid to live.

            Princess whines. I feel her dribbling on my bare foot, piss running over the edge of the doorway, soaking the porch and the landing, warm between my toes. “Oh, shit,” I say. “I got a doctor’s appointment today.”

            Princess doesn’t know what that means, she just pants and pisses all over my floor. She doesn’t speak English.

            Sometimes I wish I didn’t speak English, either.

            “Come on,” I say, tugging her inside. She waddles behind me into the bathroom. I tie her rope around the sink faucet and go back to the kitchen to grab a bowl and a tin of spam. I fill up the bowl and set down a towel. I keep the tin on the sink.

            “Alright now, Princess,” I say. “I got a doctor’s appointment at eight. So I’m going to bed until then, because my thigh’s, like, this,” I push up my boxers, to show her, “swollen, see? It’s like a golf ball. So I’m going back to bed. Then I’m going to the doctor’s. Then I’ll, I dunno, I’ll take you out. I never was a dog person. Sound good?”

            She doesn’t speak English.

            I close the bathroom door and go back to bed.

**—**

            Fanny Pinkowski’s sitting in the waiting room of the community health center. Just the two of us. It always is just the two of us. Fanny doesn’t mind, and I don’t really, either, not enough to come at a different hour, anyways.

            “Daisy Thompson’s got a new job,” I say, because this is a small town and everybody loves to hate on each other.

            “Daisy Thompson, Gretta Williams’s sister’s daughter?” Fanny says, flipping through her Cosmopolitan.

            “Yeah,” I say.

            Fanny clicks her tongue in derision. “What? Is she finally acting? Is it for a porno or a car dealership commercial?”

            “Nah,” I say. “She don’t got the measurements for either of those. She’s cleaning bedpans.”

            “Ha,” she says. She flips a page.

            Ha ha. None of the magazines are updated from last issue. I pick up National Geographic and flip through it for fifteen minutes until the nurse comes out and calls my name. I follow her into the doctor’s room.

            I sit in the doctor’s room for twenty-three minutes before the doctor opens the door.

            The doctor says my injection site’s swollen.

            “I messed up,” I say.

            “You didn’t do it subcutaneously,” she says.

            “Do I need to drain it or anything?” I say.

            “No, you’re fine,” she says.

            “Will anything happen if I don’t do anything?” I say. “Do I need to redo the injection? Could you get me a new prescription? I don’t know if I can afford an extra dose. I don’t know if the pharmacy will let me have it. Should I just wait? Are there going to be any side effects?”

            “No, you’re fine,” she says.

            She puts her hands on my knees. “You’re gaining weight.”

            “Yeah,” I say. “I’ve been feeling really sick. It’s hard to exercise.”

            “You should exercise,” she says.

            “Okay.”

            She checks my pulse. “You’re fine,” she says.

            “Okay.”

            “That’s it.”

            “That’s it?”

            “That’s it.” She hands me my file. “You can go.”

**—**

            “Hey, Peter,” Fanny says, in her car outside. Like she’s been waiting for me.

            “Hey, Fanny,” I say.

            “Need a ride?” she says, hanging her arm out her window.

            I think about it. “Yeah, that’d be nice. Thanks.”

            “Hop in.”

            I do.

            Fanny’s got a soda can between her thighs. Her cup holder’s littered with cigarette butts, right up to the brim.

            She shakes her head, pulling out of the parking lot. “I see a lot of shit. People who pretend to give a damn. My sister, you know, she told me she wishes she knew what I’m going through. Like, what the fuck? Who the fuck wishes that?”

            “Mm.”

            “There’s nothing so pathetic and vapid as liking sadness,” she says, fiddling with her soda can. “All these fuckers, you think they want cancer just so they can go through chemo.”

            I think of the doctor’s lukewarm hands on my kneecaps as she comments on my weight. I think of Daisy and her new pitbull puppy rattling the screen door at four in the morning.

            “I guess,” I say.

            Fanny quirks her lip at me. “It’s okay, Peter,” she says. “You can say it. They’re all cunts.”

            “They’re all cunts,” I agree.

            “Who never loved nobody or nothing,” she says. She turns on the radio. Eric Burdon grumbles about San Francisco. “They wanna hurt? They want an excuse for why they’re losers? Fuck, Peter, they’re so desperate to be like us. They need that chip on their shoulder. Now that,” she says, tipping her soda can, “deserves a Darwin Award. Too stupid to live.”

            “They just think it’s romantic,” I say. Too stupid to live.

            “Fuck, why?” she says. “And how? Who gave them that fucking idea? This life is a steaming pile of shit.”

            “I don’t know,” I say. I really don’t know.  

            Too stupid to live.

            “I’m mad,” she says. “I’m angry. It keeps you alive. It prevents suicide. If you get sad, you’ll get so sad you’ll die. That’s what really kills you, not the disease or the virus or the condition. The sadness. Well, I’m not sad, Peter. Not one bit. I’m pissed off.”

            “I don’t know,” I say. I really don’t know.  

            “You smell like piss, you know,” she says.

            “I know,” I say. “Daisy Thompson got a new dog and she’s making me take care of it. It pissed on me.” I think of Daisy Thompson and her dog. Who the hell buys a puppy when she’s got a new job. Too stupid to live.

            Fanny barks. “You should’ve slammed the door in her face.”

            “I couldn’t do that.”

            “I guess not. But still, you shouldn’t be taking her dog.”

            I shrug. “She needs this job,” I say. “She just, I don’t know—I don’t want to be mean, Fanny—she just needs some help. She’s picking up the dog tonight, anyways.”

            “Oh man! No. Don’t make excuses for her. Fuck Daisy Thompson,” Fanny says. “You can say it, Peter. Fuck Daisy Thompson.”

            “Fuck Daisy Thompson,” I agree.

            “Just like the rest of them,” she says, setting her soda can between her thighs again. She flips open her cigarette pack, pressed against the shift stick, settles a cigarette between her teeth. “I’m telling you, Peter, they’re all disgusting. Fucking voyeurs. Tragedy tourists. I swear.”

            “Ugh, don’t smoke around me. It makes me vomit.”

            “Sorry,” Fanny says, slipping the cigarette back into her pack. “You allergic?”

            “Not sure, honestly,” I say. “It makes me so ill, though. It sucks, because everybody smokes.”

            “Yeah,” she says. “Everybody around here really does, don’t they?”

            “They do,” I agree, pressing my shoulders against the back of the passenger seat. The fake fur brushes against my neck. Leopard print. Trashy. Is that how everything is, here. Is that how everything seems to be to me, now that I’m an adult, now that I’m unfortunate enough to have standards. My thigh hurts. “There’s my place.”

            The car parks on the sidewalk, rocking back and forth.

            “Shit,” Fanny says, soda fizzing across her bare thighs. Her car smells sweet and ashy. The sun hits her skin, makes it look like it’s sparkling. I know it’s just wet, though. “Could you get me some napkins? In the glove compartment.”

            I open it and pull some out, handing them to her.

            “Thanks,” she says, patting at herself. She sets the soda can back between her thighs.

            “Shit,” I say.

            “What?” she says.

            “Princess.” I open the car door.

**—**

            “Hey, Princess,” I coo, slapping at my knees. She dribbles on the floor, slouched over herself. “Shit.”

            I untie the rope from the sink faucet. She sinks onto the ground. “You could have just moved closer to the sink!” I say. “Christ, shit, I’m so sorry, Princess, I’m sorry.”

            I pat her head. Her eyes don’t align right, one’s lazy. Only Daisy Thompson would buy a dog with a dumb lazy eye. “Sorry, Princess,” I say as she waddles between my thighs. “I had a doctor’s appointment. If you should be mad at anyone, you should be mad at Daisy, she’s the one who left you here. I’m so sorry, Princess, God, I’m sorry.”

            She puts her nose on my crotch. I want to scream at Daisy Thompson. Too stupid to live. I push Princess away. “Alright, Princess,” I say. “You want some food? You wanna go out? Huh, girl? Huh?”

            Princess just drools and wheezes, her little puppy claws clicking against the linoleum as she sways.

            “I’m sorry,” I say, throat getting thick. I don’t know why my throat is getting thick. I don’t know why I do any of the things I do. Who the hell ties a puppy to a sink and makes her sit there for six hours. “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

            She licks at my face. Her breath smells like toilet water and drywall. I can feel her piss through my sneaker, soaking into my sock.

**—**

            “You are so lucky,” Jackie tells me. “You know, my aunt, or, my, uh, you know, I think my aunt? It doesn’t matter, does it? Ha ha. Anyways, she ended up in therapy--they thought she was schizo--turned out it was medical like that. It’s in the brain, um, physiology, you know. Who’d thought it’d mess everything else up that much, huh? They say if they caught her at your age, she’d be a lot better than she is. She’ll never get a normal life, now.

            “Besides, you’ll be back on your feet before you know it,” she says. “A young strong person like you? You’ll be fine. It could be so much worse. You could be old. Or it could be, like, cancer. Pancreatic cancer, I hear that’s a killer.”

            I could be starving on the streets. I could be murdered. I could be dropped in the middle of the Brazilian wilderness with nothing but the clothes on my back and a kitchen knife, yes, I fucking get it, Jackie.

            “Ha ha,” I say, smiling the easy one. The genuine one. She sips her wine cooler and smiles back. She feels good. I think of Fanny spilling soda on her thighs in her car.

            “Hey there, Peter,” Kim says, nudging me in the ribs. “Hey there, guy. Hey there, man. How’s it going?”

            “Alright, Kim, thanks,” I say. “How’re you?”

            “Sad you gotta go,” she says, wobbling her lip. She’s so fake, I think. She’s so fake, I’m going to throw up. “But you’ll be back, right? Macy said she’s keeping your position open for you, once you get better. It’s just a routine surgery, right?”

            Routine surgery.

            “Ha ha,” I say, smiling.

            “Ha ha,” Kim says, smiling too big. She’s so fake.

            “You were the best in the department, I always swore by it,” Christine says.

            “Yeah?” I say. “Thanks, Christine.”

            “Oh, do you want to see Jessica’s baby, Peter?” she says. She pulls out her phone. “Check this out, she’s _so_ cute. She’s adorable.”

            “I’ve already seen pictures of Jessica’s baby,” I say.

            “Oh,” she says. “Well, this one is new.”

            “I don’t want to see it,” I say.

            “You will once you see how cute she is.”

            “I really don’t care about Jessica’s baby,” I say.

            Christine looks at me like I did something wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just so tired, and my thigh hurts and I’m losing my hair and I’m so fucking young and I’m quitting work “temporarily” because a doctor in Maryland is gonna slit me from my clavicles to my cock in a month and I haven’t been allowed to yell at the top of my lungs once in my life.

            I smile.

            “He’s under a lot of stress,” Jackie says. “Chin up, Peter. You’re a great guy.”

            “An awesome guy,” Kim agrees, too quickly. “A swell man. A fine specimen of the male variety.”

            “Yeah, you are a good guy,” Christine says.

            It’s like being around for your own funeral, I suppose. All these people saying nice things about you leaving and all that. Lying on your behalf, a whole swarm of defense lawyers. Wonder what their rates are. Ha ha.

            “Ha ha,” I say, smiling.

            Ha ha.

**—**

            It’s been three days and Daisy Thompson still hasn’t picked up her damn dog. I’m not very happy about that. We’ve got a routine, now, at least. We watch the channels that old people watch, now that I’m out of a job. (Macy says “temporarily,” but I _know.)_ I went out and bought actual dog food. I fixed my own bathroom. None of this has stopped Princess from pissing on just about every object and article I own.

            Seven am is outdoor time, where I sit on the porch and freeze my ass off while Princess sniffs around my rose bush. It hasn’t bloomed in two years. Ten am is when we go out again, this time I have cheap lukewarm coffee and too much creamer. Then again at five pm, then seven, then I set her inside and let her do whatever she wants.

            She usually just pisses on my carpet.

            I don’t know how a dog can be so dumb. She’s so stupid, I don’t know how she survives. I’ve stopped being upset about it, though. That’s just the way things are. Alright, then.

            Alright.

**—**

            “What do you want?” I mumble, half asleep, Princess nosing my hand. She keeps wobbling back and forth. “Gotta go out?”

            I hear pattering, as soon as the words leave my mouth. Then I smell it.

            I press my face into my pillow. I press it real deep, so deep I can hardly breathe. And I yell.

**—**

            Piss on my fingers, I dream I am wading through a piss bog. I see a woman, pixelated on a monitor. Her name is Daisy Thompson, but she speaks like Christine Bauer, from work. She’s holding up her phone. I think she’s frowning. My eyes slide away before I can tell. Piss reeks around my knees. I am nauseous.

            “Peter,” Daisy says. I can hear her moving something off screen. It screeches along her table, muddling everything. “All the time.”

            “All time?”

            “You keep secrets.”

            “I don’t want to,” I say. “But I don’t like to think about problems.”

            “So is this like playing Hangman? Do I need to guess it? Peter, this isn’t funny for me. I’m worried about you.”

            “You shouldn’t be.”

            “I wish I could take on your pain,” she says. Slides from monitor to tree, hanging fuzzy vines, her face superimposed and blown up, grainy and out of focus. “You scare me, Peter.”

            “Well, you can’t,” I say. “Don’t dwell on it.”

            “Jesus, what is up with you?”

            “I’m fine,” I say. “The doctor says so. I say so. Everyone says so. Don’t worry about me.”

            “You’re fine,” the doctor says.

            “I just have problems,” I say.

            “What, being sick isn’t that problem?”

            “Miss Pinkowski, I got a whole life outside of being sick,” I say. The piss aches in my rotted meat core, deep and rough. My thigh is pulsating rock, knocking against my soggy hand.

            Daisy Thompson blinks at me with big eyes. “Do you?” she says. Or maybe she doesn’t. But I still hear it. Do you?

            I don’t know how to respond.

            “Ha ha,” I say, smiling.

**—**

            Daisy swings by at noon, yodeling at my front door. “Princess! Prin-cess!”

            “Hey, Daisy,” I say, making sure I have pants and a shirt on, this time.

            Daisy wrinkles her nose. “What’s that smell?”

            “What smell?”

            “That smell.”

            Probably Princess’s piss, I think. I don’t say that, though.

            “It smells like disinfectant,” Daisy says. “That’s what we use in the hospital, you know.”

            “Oh, yeah,” I say. “I do know. What’s up, Daisy?”

            “I’m here for Princess,” she says, still sniffing.       

            “I’ll go get her,” I say. “Just a sec.”

            Princess is sitting in front of the television. There’s drool all over the carpet beneath her, stained dark red. The television is whining about numbers. It’s the news. Princess blinks at me when I reach her, she stares up at me with bulging eyes. I slap my knees until she gets up. “Come on,” I say. “Hey, yeah, come on. Daisy’s here. She’s gonna take you home. Come on, that’s it, good girl, Princess.”

            “Oh, my baby!” Daisy coos, still standing at the screen door. “Come to mommy!”

            Princess waddles to Daisy’s feet.

            “She has to go to the bathroom,” I say.

            Daisy laughs. She steps aside, lets Princess fall down the porch stairs and hobble onto the grass. “Thanks so much, Peter,” she says. “I really owe you one.”

            “Yeah,” I say. “Don’t worry about it, Daisy.”

            “Okay,” she says.

            “You should take that dog to a vet,” I say. “She’s kinda off.”

            “She’s perfect,” Daisy says. “She’s my little baby. Thanks, Peter.”

            I watch her pick up Princess and walk across the yard. I look at my socks. I don’t know what to make of Daisy Thompson. I know she’s stupid. Sometimes that amuses me, but right now it makes me feel very hollow. Just the thought is like licking sawdust.

            Daisy Thompson is very stupid.

**—**

            “Hey,” Fanny says, rattling at my screen door. It’s six at night.

            “Hi,” I say. I don’t know why Fanny Pinkowski is at my door at six at night. I give her a quick once over, to see if she’s wasted or what. Her make up’s all funny, like she’s got two black eyes. “Is something up, Fanny?”

            “Shut up,” she spits. “Fuck, Peter, you think you’re so great? You ain’t, you ain’t shit. Fuck you.”

            “Uh,” I say.

            “Fuck you!” she says. “Fuck all of you, none of you give a shit about me.”

            “Huh,” I say.

            She pauses, sniffs the air. “What’s that smell?”

            “Princess,” I say. “Daisy took her back.”

            “And you haven’t cleaned up that smell?”

            “I guess I don’t think of those things.”

            “God, you’re disgusting,” Fanny says. “Why did I ever decide to be nice to you.”

            “I have no idea, Fanny,” I say.

            “I’m going to die,” she says. “I’m going to die, and I’m unhappy.”

            “That really sucks.”

            “Yeah, it does.”

            She just stands there, my front porch light casting her shadow long and thin into my home, up my own legs, ending at my thighs. She wobbles back and forth. “Do you want a drink, Fanny?” I say.

            “I want to not feel anything ever again,” she says.

            “Fanny, I don’t want you to do anything impulsive. I’m here if you need to talk.”

            “I gotta be angry, Peter,” she says. “And you gotta be, too. It’s the only thing we’re allowed to be anymore that’s a choice. It’s the only fucking thing we got control over. I’m so pissed off, I’m so mad, I’m gonna puke.”

            “Alright, Fanny.”

            She nods her head, grinning hard, her cheeks stretched. I don’t know what she’s looking at. She burps. It smells like nicotine. “Do you ever get this fear that you’re a bad person?” she says.

            “All the time.”

            She sways, lurching forward and backward. “Peter.”

            “Yes, Fanny?”

            “Do you think there’s a heaven?”

            “I do, Fanny.”

            “Why?”

            I think of the doctor’s hands, my job, Daisy’s dog, Fanny burping and rattling. “Because there’s gotta be some place better than here.”

            She smiles. “Ha,” she says. She nods her head and grins so hard, staring at the floor. Then she cries. I don’t say anything. I just watch her cry.

            “Shit, I don’t know why I’m crying,” she says, rubbing at her face. “I don’t know why I do these things.”

            “You wanna come in and lie down, Fanny?” I say. “You don’t seem like you’re ready to drive.”

            She laughs, spurting snot. “Jesus, Peter, are you’re propositioning me? Try harder. Fuck. Ha ha. Ha ha.”

            “I’m really not,” I say, watching her rub snot over her hands, wiping it on her tank top. “I’m just worried about you, Fanny. I don’t think you’re okay.”

            “Don’t tell me what I am and what I’m not,” she says. “Ha ha. Ha ha.”

            “Fanny, you gotta calm down. Can you breathe slow?”

            “Fuck, what’re you, my therapist? Ha ha. Ha ha.”

            “No, Fanny, I’m your friend.”

            “Friend? Ha ha. Ha ha. That’s rich, Peter. We ain’t friends.”

            She stumbles off my porch, clattering over the steps. “We ain’t even neighbors!” she calls out to me, hobbling across my black lawn, down to her car. “We’re fucking comrades, you and me, Peter! Right in the trenches. And we’re gonna lose! We’re gonna _lo-ose!_ Fuck!”

            I don’t know what to do. I just watch her get into her car. I walk to the edge of my porch. I don’t see her turn on the car. She’s just sitting there, crying and laughing. Crying and laughing. Ha ha. Ha ha. Her outline smacks her head off the steering wheel and crumples, heaving. I turn away. I leave my door open and crawl into my bed. I put my pillow over my face, to drown it all out.

**—**

            I’m only twenty-five. I don’t think there’s any age that’s right to deal with this stuff. I still can’t tell if I’m too young or too old. Jackie thinks I’m lucky. I think she should shut up and know her place. She doesn’t know anything about my life. No one does. I’m alone.

            Completely alone.

            I’ll take Kim’s eulogy and go. That’s good enough for me. That’s my exit cue. Better to go out a decent person than a talking point. Better go out as Peter than as Daisy Thompson. Better to keep a stiff upper lip than haunt the night like Fanny Pinkowski. I’m better. Really.

            Something’s rotten, I know that, I just don’t know where it is, where the smell’s coming from, that’s all. The bathroom, maybe. I groan against my pillow. My thigh still hurts. It’s swollen and deep purple, hard as a rock. I’m fine, though. The doctor said.

            Something’s rotten, and I don’t know what it is, either. Maybe it’s in the bathroom, but what is it, huh. This is all conjecture. I’m tired. Fanny slamming her head into her steering wheel, wailing like something out of a ghost story.

            I think of Fanny, pillow over my nose and mouth, I think of her screaming about death. Because she is screaming about death. She doesn’t want to die, does she? What a shame, because she’s going to die. We’re all going to die. Fanny’s genitals exploded last week, ovaries burst like a couple of firecrackers, and she almost died like that. What a way to go. No wonder she’s pissed off, huh. She’s only thirty-two. Too young or too old. I can’t tell.

            If there’s one thing Fanny said that’s 100% true, no denying it, it’s that we’re in the trenches. This is attrition. At this point, it really isn’t the disease that’ll kill us. It’s everything else. It’s the whole world on our backs, its rancid, wet breath hot against our necks. Chemo isn’t saving Fanny’s life and surgery isn’t gonna save mine.

            I don’t think anger will, either.

            But what else are we supposed to do. Fanny’s still screaming in my ears. I press my pillow against my face. Harder. I should call someone. I can’t move. Yes, I can. I just can’t make myself. Disgusting. I’m a maggot, squirming around and feasting on my own fetid corpse. That’s fucked up. Why did I just think that. That’s so fucked up.

            I should help Fanny, but I won’t. I don’t know what else I can do. Maybe there isn’t anything. Maybe I can’t fix anyone or anything. What’s the point, then. What’s the point in leaving the house or talking or eating if you can’t help nobody, not even yourself. What’s the point. I can’t help Fanny, can I. I can’t.

            I press the pillow into my eye sockets, I can’t, I can’t. It’s all very grim. I’m tired of being reduced. There’s a degradation to being ill, isn’t there? There’s nothing I can say to Fanny that she hasn’t already thought. We are the same creature. Even if I wanted to say something, nothing would come out, there is only pillow case on my tongue. I close my eyes and drown it all out.

**—**

            Daisy Thompson slams my front door open and shut, wailing and weeping at four in the morning.

            “I lost my job,” she screams.

            “Uh,” I say.

            “Those fuckers,” she sobs.

            “Huh,” I say.

            “I needed vacation time,” she simpers, “and they didn’t give it.”

            “Hm,” I say.

            “I couldn’t do it no more,” she sighs.

            “Mm,” I say.

            “But they didn’t gotta fire me! They were being unfair, not me,” she shrieks.

            “You didn’t show up to work,” I say.

            “Well, they wouldn’t give me vacation time,” she sniffs.

            “So you didn’t show up to work,” I say.

            “I needed vacation time.”

            “Daisy,” I say, pressing my hand against my doorframe, barring her out. “You didn’t show up to work.”

            She shifts, hunching her shoulders. “You’re giving me a panic attack,” she says, gulping air.

            “No I ain’t,” I say. “You never had a fucking panic attack in your life, Daisy. You didn’t show up to work, so they fired you.”

            “Petey,” she groans.

            “Daisy, I won’t talk to you until you can say it with me. So they didn’t give you vacation. What did you do, Daisy?”

            “I didn’t show up to work,” she mumbles.

            “Alright,” I say. “Why you talking to me about it?”

            “Cause you’re the only person in the whole world who gives half a damn about me,” she says. She wipes her face, snot sticking to her fist, stretching out into a tightrope between her nostril and her hand until it snaps.

            I don’t give a rat’s ass about Daisy Thompson. I think it’s really sad that she thinks I do. That’s downright depressing. “Alright,” I say. “Try to calm down, yeah? Come in. I’ll get you a drink, Daisy. Just try to calm down.”

            “Okay,” she says. “Okay. Can I have a soda?”

            “Sure,” I say. “Come on, Daisy. Just go sit in that chair right there. I’ll get you a soda.”

            “Thanks,” she gags. She pulls out her pack of cigarettes and flips it open. She lights one. I hand her a soda.

            Two crying women in less than twelve hours. My skull pounds.

            “How do I deal with it,” she says. “How do I deal with it.” She exhales smoke and I throw up in my mouth.

            “You just do,” I say.

            “Does it get easier?” she says.

            “Does what get easier?”

            “It.”

            I understand. I don’t know how or why I understand, I just do.

            “It gets quieter,” I say, “but it never goes away.”

            Daisy fiddles with her cigarette, wipes her eyes with the inside of her wrist. “Then what’s the point?” she says.

            “I’m not sure,” I say. “I can’t come up with that for you. You gotta make that decision, if it’s worth it to keep going.”

            “And if it isn’t worth it?”

            “Then you kill yourself.”

            Daisy leans over, holding her head up. She stares at the space between our feet with haunted eyes. “You don’t gotta be so blunt,” she says.

            “No,” I say, “but I want to be.”

            She looks at my kneecaps. “Fuck, we’re getting old, Petey,” she says. “We ain’t kids no more. We’re gonna die someday.”

            “I know,” I say.

            “I studied to be a nurse,” she says. “I got good grades. I’m, like, a fucking genius, Petey. Why do I fuck up my life like this.”

            “I don’t know,” I say. “I guess we all need someone to fuck over, and it’s usually ourselves.”

            She takes a long drag from her cigarette. She doesn’t say anything.

            Daisy’s neck wobbles above her clavicles, like a stalk in the breeze. I feel a tenderness for her. Some sort of long lost paternal instinct, maybe. This place is littered with fuck-ups, right now. I’m in no position to judge her.

            “How’s Princess?” I say. I try to use a gentle voice. I think of Daisy, all grainy and piss-stained in my dreams.

            “Who?” Daisy sniffs.

            “Your...your dog, Daisy. Princess. The puppy.”

            “Oh!” Daisy says. She starts crying again. “I put her up in my kitchen, put a puppy pen around her? She got into the cabinets and tore into the Drano. She’s dead.”

            “Dead?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Why would you leave your dog in your kitchen? Why would you just leave her like that?”

            “I was busy!” she says.

            “You weren’t at work!”

            “So! I can still be busy, even if I ain’t at work.”

            I stare at her, my tongue drying. She sniffs, rubbing at her red nose. She’s scowling. She’s mad at me. Holy shit. Holy shit, _she’s_ mad at _me._

            It’s okay, Peter. You can say it.

            “Daisy,” I say lowly, “sometimes it’s really hard for me to feel sorry for you.”

            “Yeah, well, you don’t gotta,” she says, fiddling with the tab of her soda can. “I fuck up a lot, I know that.”

            “Fuck up-- Daisy, that puppy’s dead!”

            Daisy shrugs, rolling her shoulders.

            I think of Princess, wobbling around in my front yard. Pissing all over my floor in every room. Watching trashy game shows with me. Chewing her way into a bottle of Drano. I want to reach over and snap Daisy Thompson’s neck. She’s too stupid to own a dog. She’s too stupid to feel sorry when it dies. Too stupid to live.

            I stare at Daisy’s pouting face. A child. Not fit for a porno or a car dealership commercial, not fit for acting or cleaning bedpans. “Daisy,” I say.

            “What?” she mumbles.

            “I’m going to give you an opportunity,” I say. I think about smashing her face in, taking her skull between my hands, her hair rubbing against the pads of my fingers, and pressing until her bone caves. I’d settle for punching her in the face, though.

            “You’re scaring me, Peter.”

            “You gotta take accountability, Daisy.”

            Her face twists. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

            I laugh. I really laugh, seeing her pretty face all scrunched up with derision. What a card. I see things very clearly, in that moment, too clearly. I see that nobody cares about anything, ever. We’re all too busy feeling sorry for ourselves. “You really are too stupid to live,” I say. “Jesus.”

            Daisy recoils, leaning back in the chair. She shoves her cigarette between her tight lips.

            “Daisy Thompson,” I say warmly, leaning forward. I think of something so much more painful than bashing her face in with a baseball bat. “Is there a car parked on the road, out there?”

            “Yeah,” she says.

            “There a girl inside?”

            “Didn’t check.” She takes a swig of her soda, her wrist quaking. Her throat flexes.

            “Go check,” I say, reaching out and plucking her cigarette from her fingers.

            “Why,” she says, frowning at me.

            “Her name’s Fanny Pinkowski,” I say, setting her cigarette between my own lips. “She’s got cancer all over her. She’s dying. She’s really upset. You should talk to her.”

            “Why,” she says.

            “Life’s short,” I say. “Fanny’s life’s shorter. You should talk to her.”

            “Or what.”

            “Or I’ll bust you in the jaw, that’s what,” I say, inhaling. My throat burns. “You aren’t as a good person as you think, Daisy. I’m not, either. I won’t feel bad about it.”

            “What the hell is wrong with you?” she says.

            “I give you back your dog for one day,” I say, “and you kill it. I want you to think about that, like, really think about that, Daisy. You killed your dog.”

            “So what?”

            “So what I want you to do is make amends. Go talk to Fanny Pinkowski.”

            Daisy stares at her cigarette in my mouth. “That’s my cigarette,” she says.

            “And this is my house,” I say. “And that’s my soda. And that was your dog.” Pissing on my carpet, my thigh pulses in time with my heart, I ache somewhere indefinable. I am a victor. A fine specimen of the male variety.

            “Talk to Fanny,” I say. “Teach her your shitty Broadway musicals. You wanna play nurse? Go play nurse.”

            Daisy sets her soda on the floor. “Okay,” she says. She stands up. I hear the screen door flap open and shut. I see her cross the yard, down to the parked car. She pokes her head into the passenger side.

            I take another drag from Daisy’s cigarette and gag. Bile dribbles out of my lips. I wipe my face with the back of my arm. I take a deep breath of the morning air. Smells like cigarette ash and old piss and dew.

            Daisy opens the passenger door and climbs in. The car doesn’t move and nobody cries.

            Hospice care in an ’04 Chevy Cobalt. What a sight. I grin until my cheeks ache.


End file.
